Paul Eisen

Monday, 26 November 2012

'We want our foster children back' from The Telegraph

Readers in the UK will know about this astonishing story, but others may not.

The couple at the centre of the Ukip fostering row spoke yesterday of their
desire to have the three children returned to them.

In an interview with The Telegraph, the experienced foster parents called on the council involved to make a public apology and clear their record.

They demanded assurances from Rotherham metropolitan borough council – which removed three ethnic minority siblings from them because the couple were members of the UK Independence Party – that they would be allowed to resume caring for other vulnerable children. The pair, who have not been named to protect the three children, said that in an ideal world they would like to have them back, but that the council’s actions had ruined their chances because they did not want to cause the children any more upheaval or distress.

“From a personal and selfish point of view, we would like the children back,” the wife said. “But we are more concerned with the children’s welfare, and we do not want them traumatised any more than they already have been. It is not going to be feasible to take these children back. They are the innocent victims in all this. They deserve better.”

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, condemned Rotherham council’s “indefensible” decision after The Daily Telegraph revealed that it had taken the children away earlier this month on the grounds that the couple supported Ukip’s “racist” policies. The authority has begun an internal inquiry.

As the row threatened to dominate this week’s Rotherham by-election, Tim Loughton, a former children’s minister, said the decision to remove the children on account of political affiliation was “deeply misguided” and called for the children to be returned to the couple.

“This is the wrong decision for the kids, the wrong decision for the foster carers, and it sends out the wrong message to people who might be coming forward as foster carers or adoptive parents — that if they have some political connections then they’ll be vetoed, which is far from the truth.”

The husband and wife yesterday spoke of their gratitude for the support they had received since the scandal was exposed.

They said they believed they had done the “right thing” in coming forward and warned that excessive political correctness in trying to match children to families from the same ethnic background had left too many youngsters “languishing” in care.

Speaking at their home near Rotherham, South Yorks, the couple, who are in their late fifties, made a passionate plea for fostering and adoption to focus on the child’s needs, rather than politics and race. They also revealed that they had heard nothing from the council since the row erupted on Saturday.

“We feel that we have personally been slandered and we would like a public apology from Rotherham,” the wife said. “We would also like something in the form of a letter stating that they have got it wrong in this case and that it will not be on our records that we have had children removed from our care. We just want a clean slate.”

The couple went through an intrusive six-month screening process, which looked at every aspect of their personal lives and beliefs, before they were accepted as foster carers. They have been fostering for nearly seven years and have looked after about a dozen children, many with very difficult backgrounds.

They have no regrets about speaking out about their treatment by Labour-run Rotherham council. The wife, a qualified nursery nurse who devoted herself to looking after their foster children full-time, said: “It was the right thing to do because the issue of race and culture is stopping people from coming forward to be foster carers, and it is preventing people from adopting children.

“Adoption and fostering are not about politics, they’re about children. The main needs of the child are that they are found loving, stable homes, where they can be brought up in an atmosphere of love, warmth and security to enable them to grow into stable adults and take their place in society.”

Her husband, a former Navy reservist who works with disabled people, added: “It is only by us actually doing this that we could help to change things. I don’t think we had any idea how enormous it was going to be because we’re small ­people. We’re shocked to see it go like it has, but pleasantly surprised.”

The couple are still angry at the way Rotherham council handled the situation. With no warning, a social worker informed them that the children were being removed after an anonymous caller told the authority of the couple’s Ukip membership. Within days, the youngsters were gone.

“The innocent people in all this are the children,” the wife said. “These children were just starting to settle in, we had got them into a routine.

“To come to our house one day and say that these children are going to be removed, and to do it within days, is absolutely beyond the pale.”

The couple would now like to get on with fostering other children, and say they do not care what race or religion they are.

On Saturday, Joyce Thacker, the council’s strategic director of children and young people’s services, had claimed that it was right to remove the children because Ukip was opposed to multi­culturalism.

Since the foster row story broke, claims have emerged of discrimination against other Ukip supporters. They include a former district nurse who says she was barred from volunteering as a mentor for young adults by Barnardo’s, the child­ren’s charity, after standing as a candidate for Ukip, and another woman who alleges that she was forced out of her public sector job because she was a party activist.

Barnardo’s said it could not comment on individual cases but stressed that it had no “blanket ban” on taking on ­people from any political party and took a number of factors into account when deciding whether applicants were suitable.

Yesterday, Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, said the party would abandon its pledge not to stand against Eurosceptic Tory MPs after David Cameron refused to retract comments describing Ukip members as mostly “closet racists”.